I just have to give a hearty laugh..
and no implications of taking pleasure in these nice people's plightat
all ,
as I myself as rattled along in ( in-my-case-stock ) a  diesel vanagon
on the ragged edge of catastophic failure, on gone over that edge.:-)

( 'the only' I might add, vehicle or engine of any type that has ever
seriously blown up in my entire quite easily possible million mile
driving career, and might be just one factor in why I tend to hate them
, lol )

It will be a great adventure, in any case.

Bishop, Ca ..voted the best place to break-downin a vanagon, 3 yrs in a
row!

send that to the local tourism bureauthere ....they'll love it !

Other/more :

the Bristlcone Pines in the nearby White Mountains are up to 2,500 or
more years old..some of the oldest living plants on the the planet, btw.
  It is a magic placeand area.
If it weren't so inlandI could almost for sure livethere.

I would love to do a ski-born north-south winter traverse of the White
Mountains there ..
they are 10,000 to 13,000feet, seldom visited. Basically pristine in the
more remote parts I believe.
And those Bristlecone Pines ...
California is truly The Golden State.

On 5/28/2013 11:16 PM, neil n wrote:
> How many miles on the engine swap? If relatively low miles (i.e. swap
> recently done...)
>
> I assume you're running the stock diesel input shaft, but was the
> pilot bearing replaced when the engine swap happened?
>
> Neil.
>
> On Tue, May 28, 2013 at 9:19 PM, Timmy Evens <monkey_lips@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>    Had been dealing w finicky engine throughout the day and finally seemed to be under control as we headed up the brutal grade out of bishop. Something have way while going 30 in 2nd. Tranny is definitely a rattling bucket of bolts. Headed to sierra vs repair. Anyone have any tips? Tranny replacement?
>>
>> Tim
>> 2.0 aba digifant 1.8 head
>> Converted from 82 diesel